Tuesday evening at the beginning of the Cougar baseball game with the University of Portland, WSU Athletics kindly recognized the achievements of our CVM faculty -- for many of the awards I've previously noted in this blog, here, here, here, and here.

As dean, I was given the dubious honor of throwing out the first pitch.  Deans often delegate, but this weighty responsibility I felt I had to discharge myself.  I, of course, had immense support: Tim let me know it was better to look bad throwing long rather than look bad bouncing it up to the plate.  Terry helpfully offered to stand half-way between the mound and home plate to serve as my cutoff man.  Bob and Katrina assured me that it was so easy a 10-year-old could do it, and throw a strike to boot (their son in a similar circumstance three years ago), ...no problem, ...no pressure.

In the end it turned out OK and I embarrassed no one; it helped to take a few tosses to my wife in the back yard the night before so that this wasn't the first time in 10 years I threw a hard ball -- plus, knowing I had such unqualified support from all these wonderful friends and colleagues helped a lot.

I had never been on our field before.  The most interesting thing was the composition of the pitchers' mound.  It is as hard as a rock, and not at all what I had thought it would be.  Also, except for the pitchers' mound, the entire surface is artificial field turf, including the base paths -- they are just painted brown instead of green.  It's been a long time since little league...